CRI听力:China's Megatrends - Futurists' View of China

Anchor: The 16th Beijing International Book Fair started Thursday, highlighting the publication of a new book "China's Megatrends", written by the world's leading futurist, John Naisbitt and his wife. In the Chinese version, the writers try to analyze China's model from eight aspects, what they call the eight pillars of a new society. Ting Ting has more.

Report: As the world's leading futurist, John Naisbitt wrote his bestselling book "Megatrends" in 1982. It has since become one of the biggest successes in the publishing world and was on the New York Times' Best Seller List for two years. The book has been published in 57 countries and has sold more than 9 million copies.

In 2006, John Naisbitt and his wife, Doris, set up the Naisbitt China Institute in north China's Tianjin to research "China's Megatrends." (www.hXen.com)

Doris Naisbitt says what they found out was much bigger than what they had expected.

"We experienced that China was not only changing rapidly within a system that has been well established, as China was doing when [John] wrote "Megatrends," but that China is creating a whole new system."

Doris Naisbitt calls China's political system a "vertical democracy" compared to "horizontal democracies" in the West.

Communication between leaders and common people and the use of both top-down and bottom-up approaches to address social problems in China has helped Chinese leaders to unify the nation and focus on development.

"The advantage of the Chinese system lies in the ability of the government, of the leadership, to allow long-term plans which are not interrupted by election-driven thinking."

The Chinese system has helped the country make great achievements in the past 30 years.

John Naisbitt says China's prosperity is far from over, and a great future lies ahead.

"We think that China is about 30 percent, about a third, of the way towards realizing its potential. So what is in place now is going to go on through this century; and next year, China will become the second largest economy in the world."

In their new book, the Naisbitts try to analyze China's model from eight aspects. They called them the eight pillars of a new society. From the liberation of people's thoughts, the Naisbitts go on to analyze the rise of China's economy, society, culture, international relations and its efforts to establish a sustainable way of development.

The Naisbitts believe that in the next decades China will not only change the global economy, but also challenge Western democracy with its own model.

The German version of their new book will be released at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. The English version will be released in January 2010.

The 16th Beijing International Book Fair runs until next Monday at the Beijing International Exhibition Centre. More than 600 national and 1,000 foreign publishers are attending.

Ting Ting CRI News.